Following a London West End run in December 2007, a sold-out limited engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in March 2008, and a subsequent eight-week run on Broadway, director Rupert Goold’s gripping stage production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth was filmed for television at the end of 2009. Starring Sir Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood reprising their triumphant, Tony-nominated performances as the ambitious Macbeth and his coldly scheming Lady, this richly cinematic high-definition adaptation comes to Great Performances
Wednesday, Oct. 6 at 8 p.m.

The co-production between WNET.ORG and Illuminations Television, in association with the BBC, retains Goold’s exciting concept of relocating the bloody action to a nameless 20th-century militaristic society. Taken out of its original Scottish context, this adaptation offers an allegory of war and the quest for power in the modern world where an intelligent, rational person can be driven to madness by outside forces and his own violent transgressions.

WNET is offering a Teachers’ Guide
for educators to utilize the PBS broadcast in classrooms around
the country. The activity-based analysis of the play is illustrated by various lesson plans and activities.